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Hundreds of thousands of unused kegs of Guinness have been repurposed to fertilize Christmas trees during the coronavirus lockdown.<\/p>\nHundreds of thousands of unused kegs of Guinness have been repurposed to fertilize Christmas trees during the coronavirus lockdown.<\/p>\n
The forestry project is one of several environmentally friendly disposal routes the famous Irish brewery employed as it brought back millions of liters of stout, beer and ale from closed pubs and bars.<\/p>\n
At the start of the lockdown in Ireland, Guinness reduced operations at its St James\u2019s Gate brewery in Dublin to the minimal level required to keep its yeast stocks alive.<\/p>\n
It was the first time that had happened since the 1916 Easter Rising rebellion in the city.<\/p>\n
Now production has ramped up once again as pubs and bars across Ireland, the UK and beyond prepare to start welcoming customers back.<\/p>\n
Anticipating the challenges the drinks industry is set to encounter in the era of social distancing, Guinness owner Diageo has announced a $100 million \u2018Raising the Bar\u2019 fund to help pubs pay for new hygiene and safety measures \u2013 \u20ac14 million of which is being made available on the island of Ireland.<\/p>\n
Aidan Crowe, the director of operations at the brewery, said Guinness decided in the early days of lockdown to support its on-trade customers by retrieving the kegs that were set to go undrunk due to the closure of hospitality outlets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough time in the brewery but it\u2019s been a much tougher time if you\u2019re trying to run on-trade outlets in this part of the world,\u201d he told PA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why it was very, very important right from the start of the lockdown to support the on-trade as much as we could. That\u2019s why we took the decision to bring back all of the beer from the on-trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cBasically what we do is we take all the keg beer back and we decant it and we disperse the product through a number of environmentally sustainable routes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of the beer goes to willow and Christmas tree plantations, it\u2019s used as nutrients in those farms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve also diverted some product through to anaerobic digesters, where it produces a bio-gas.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, we\u2019re quite optimistic that, in the long term, that bio-gas can be a suitable fuel source for us to use here in the brewery.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then we\u2019ve also diverted some of the product for composting.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s an unprecedented problem for us to have and we wanted to ensure that in terms of how we manage that and manage the beer it was environmentally sustainable, because that\u2019s so critically important, not just for our business, but obviously for the country as a whole as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how many litres had been returned, Mr Crowe said: \u201cYou\u2019d probably make me cry if I started to add it all up, but it\u2019s hundreds of thousands of kegs and we\u2019ve still got some products to decant and we\u2019ve still got some markets that haven\u2019t finished returning their beer to us. So a lot of beer and a lot of kegs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The main brew house at St James\u2019s Gate produces 7.2 million hectoliters (720 million litres) a year.<\/p>\n
That amounts to 39 pints a second all year round.<\/p>\n
Ordinarily, St James\u2019s brews 2.5 million pints of Guinness every day and 1.5 million pints of other beer and stout.<\/p>\n
But all that was scaled back in the last two weeks of March and first week of April.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur biggest job really over that period of time was just managing what was an unprecedented downturn,\u201d said Mr Crowe.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably going back to 1916, actually, is the last time we had such a dramatic short-term change.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, thankfully, we\u2019re on the other side of that, we\u2019re ramping up very, very strongly through the months of June and July.\u201d<\/p>\n
St James\u2019s Gate\u2019s three largest markets are Great Britain, Ireland and North America but overall it distributes to 130 countries worldwide.<\/p>\n
All stout, beer and ale produced at the height of lockdown was used only for canned products.<\/p>\n
So while the kegging operation at St James\u2019s Gate ground to a near halt, canning and bottle operations in Belfast and Runcorn actually stepped up production, to meet the added demand from the off-sales trade.<\/p>\n
Mr Crowe said the biggest challenge the brewery now faces is the uncertainty about what demand will look like in the first few months of eased restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be prepared for different eventualities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s slower than we expect, we\u2019ve got to be ready for that. If it\u2019s significantly busier than we expect, we\u2019ve got to be ready for that too. And we are ready, we will be ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a much nicer set of challenges to be trying to manage than the challenges that we had back in March when everything was being ramped down.\u201d<\/p>\n